FFOS accuses successive govts of maritime negligence after latest incident

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) has ac­cused suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of ne­glect­ing mar­itime safe­ty, as it called for an ur­gent search and res­cue op­er­a­tion fol­low­ing Sun­day’s boat­ing col­li­sion that left five peo­ple miss­ing.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, FFOS cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud ex­pressed con­cern and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the fam­i­lies of the miss­ing per­sons, say­ing every avail­able re­source must be mo­bilised to find them.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said the first 24 hours were crit­i­cal and ques­tioned whether the full force of the na­tion­al search and res­cue re­sponse had been de­ployed.

FFOS called on the au­thor­i­ties to mo­bilise all avail­able Coast Guard ves­sels, air­craft, trained res­cue per­son­nel and oth­er mar­itime re­sources, while pro­vid­ing reg­u­lar up­dates to the pub­lic.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so called for an in­de­pen­dent and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to re­ports that a ju­ve­nile was op­er­at­ing a high-pow­ered ves­sel at dan­ger­ous speeds be­fore col­lid­ing with an­oth­er ves­sel, be­lieved to be a pirogue.

It raised ques­tions about the op­er­a­tor’s age, speed, com­pe­ten­cy, su­per­vi­sion and whether the re­quired li­cens­ing and safe­ty mea­sures were in place.

FFOS said the col­li­sion high­light­ed what it de­scribed as decades of gov­ern­ment neg­li­gence in ad­dress­ing mar­itime safe­ty.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion claimed it had spent 30 years pe­ti­tion­ing suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions for mod­ern fish­eries man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion cov­er­ing ves­sel reg­is­tra­tion, cap­tain li­cens­ing, op­er­a­tor com­pe­ten­cy, speed re­stric­tions and en­force­ment.

It said gov­ern­ments had re­peat­ed­ly been warned about fore­see­able dan­gers but had failed to im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary re­forms.

FFOS is now call­ing for the long-await­ed fish­eries man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion to be pub­lished and laid in Par­lia­ment, along with an ur­gent na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion in­volv­ing fish­er­folk as­so­ci­a­tions, mar­itime op­er­a­tors, the Coast Guard, tech­ni­cal ex­perts, civ­il so­ci­ety and par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

It al­so wants firm dead­lines es­tab­lished for leg­isla­tive re­form, im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­force­ment.

“This is not a PNM is­sue. This is not a UNC is­sue. This is a hu­man life is­sue,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion said.

FFOS warned that if its ap­peals con­tin­ued to go unan­swered, peace­ful mass mo­bil­i­sa­tion and law­ful civ­il ac­tion could be­come un­avoid­able.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said its im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty re­mained the safe re­turn of the five miss­ing per­sons, adding that their fam­i­lies de­served an­swers, ur­gency and ac­tion.